State Court New Jersey September 12
State Court Houston October (exact date unknown)
Federal Court New Orleans Nov. 28,
Federal Court New Orleans, Feb. 13, 2006
Federal Court New Orleans, March 13, 2006
Federal Court New Orleans, April 10, 2006
By the way, according to this article in the New York Times, Merck has shifted its strategy and now said that it may settle some of the claims against it.
The Maryland Court of Appeals has ruled that a defendant may use photos showing relatively little property damage to a vehicle to argue that the plaintiff did not have a significant personal injury.
The decision is Mason v. Lynch. There is also a great dissent on the issue; it makes the point that there is a substantial body of scientific literature that actually disproves the argument that “minor” impacts do not cause serious neck injuries. Accordingly, the dissent argues, a lawyer should not be able to make the argument that an injury is not real or significant simply based on the lack of property damage seen in photographs.
OK – so it is a recycled joke. Most of them are.
How many Bush administration officials does it take to change a light bulb? Ten
1. One to deny that a light bulb needs to be changed;
I wrote the other day about Rev. Robertson’s suggestion that the United States kill a foreign leader. Here is the post.
August 22, 2005: Believe it or not there are people who get there news from Pat Robertson. This man, who runs a tax-exempt empire that he holds out as a church, now has called for the assassination of the leader of a foreign country.
What does the rest of the world – particularly the Muslim world – think about America when one of us who is prominent to have his own TV show calls for the murder of a foreign leader? When a nut in the Muslim world does this we call him a savage and a terrorist.
I mentioned the other day that we would be hosting a couple of seminars in December, the first designed to help newer lawyers and the second designed for those with a little more experience. You can read more about both programs, and register on-line, by clicking here.
Another state has ruled tht a plaintiff “may present to the jury the amount that her health care providers initially billed for services rendered” rather than the amount paid by the plaintiff’s insurer.
The case is Arthur v. Catour; read the opinion of the Illinois Supreme Court here. The decision cites to the law of other jurisdictions on the issue.
Believe it or not there are people who get there news from Pat Robertson. This man, who runs a tax-exempt empire that he holds out as a church, now has called for the assassination of the leader of a foreign country.
What does the rest of the world – particularly the Muslim world – think about America when one of us who is prominent to have his own TV show calls for the murder of a foreign leader? When a nut in the Muslim world does this we call him a savage and a terrorist.
See the words and watch the video of “our” nut here. And then think about the fact that right now in some cave in Pakistan this video is being shown to a bunch of angry young men with guns, bombs, and a willingness to sacrifice their lives in the name of their religion.
The Illinois Court of Appeals remanded a wrongful death case for trial on behalf of a child who died in a fire started by a lighter that lacked child-resistent features. Name of the lighter: “Aim ‘n Flame.”
The court found that the jury could have reasonably concluded that the risks of the lighter as manufactured outweighed the benefits of it, making it defective. The court affirmed dismissal of the negligence and failure to warn claims.
Read the opinion here
The next Vioxx trial in September 12 in New Jersey.
This represents my best guess of what the tort reformers would have wrote if Merck had won the Texas Vioxx trial:
“Well, the greedy plaintiff’s lawyers did their best but they could not fool the good people of Texas. Mark Lanier, who is supposed to be a star of the plaintiff’s bar, was rumored by the liberal media to be winning the case, which only shows how out-of-touch they are with mainstream America. Real people can see right through a huckster like Lanier, who apparently left his alleged trial advocacy skills in his plane.
Sooner or later the socialists who have (temporarily) captured the American media will learn that jurors will not fall for the sympathy plays used by Lanier and his ilk. No – jurors listen to and evaluate the facts. They listen to scientific experts and disregard those who create new “science” for the purposes of litigation. The American people are not dummies, notwithstanding the pabulum that they have been served by a media that assumes they are ignorant.
